


Inevitable

by Trobadora



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode: s01e13 The Parting of the Ways, Episode: s03e11 Utopia, Gen, Time Lord senses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-03
Updated: 2010-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-08 16:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>When Jack was mortal, the potential timelines spinning out from their present formed familiar patterns.</i> - Set during <i>The Parting of the Ways</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inevitable

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Winter Companions 2010 Doctor/Jack Fest](http://community.livejournal.com/wintercompanion/91547.html). The prompt was: _The real reason the sight of Jack makes the Doctor queasy._

When Jack was mortal, the potential timelines spinning out from their present formed familiar patterns.

They'd travel together for a while, with Rose or without her, with other people, on their own, until ...

_... Jack would leave him (them), he would leave Jack behind, Jack would die, he himself would die permanently ..._

Well. The usual options, the usual losses. The usual pain.

But all that's changing, new timelines stretching out into infinity.

The Doctor catches a glimpse just as the timelines are forming - his own and Jack's, inexplicably tied to each other in each potential future, never mind that one is the complex fractal spin of a Time Lord's life and the other a single, impossible collapse of _here_ and _everywhere_, of _now_ and _always_.

He looks away after a fraction of a second, but he's seen too much already.

There is no part of his future that doesn't have Jack _somewhere_. Jack is a Fact; he'll always be there at the edge of the Doctor's awareness, even when they're millennia and galaxies apart.

Never to be lost again, impossible to avoid.

And with this ahead of him, a single constant to his life, more constant than the TARDIS, more constant than Gallifrey and the Eye of Harmony itself - with this, inevitably, in his future, the Doctor runs.

Runs from his own inescapable timeline, and runs along it, and knows he will not escape, but he can't look again.

He can't look.

He's not ready for what he might see.


End file.
